Timo Nasseri

O Time Thy Pyramids
Opening on Thursday, 6 September 2012, 7 - 10 pm, in the presence of the artist
September 5, 2012 - October 20, 2012

In his first exhibition at our Hamburg gallery, Timo Nasseri showed work focused on Arabic arithmetic and its influence on Islamic architecture. He exhibited reflecting sculptures like Muqarnas/Epistrophy, and Glance as well as One and One: a series of precisely executed drawings in white ink on black paper.

This time, Timo Nasseri has found his inspiration in the studies of Jacob Steiner (1796 – 1863), a Swiss mathematician known for his contributions to the development of modern synthetic geometry. The artist has taken these ideas and used them to shift his focus to the exploration of quantum theory within his larger discourse on infinity. These principles ultimately lead to the belief in infinite parallel universes, endlessly expanding across all probabilities.

The exhibition’s title quotes The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges in which an infinite library is described, containing all the information of the universe in every language, coded and organized by an incomprehensible system that renders it all useless and unattainable. “O time thy pyramids” is the only decipherable sentence discovered, and only made ascertainable by the constricting circumstances of this present reality.

Nasseri’s new works appear to be scientific at first glance. The artist has created these sculptures and drawings, using formulas and models linguistically. Their components (lines, dots, curves, letters, numbers, and cartographic elements) are made clear and associated in a way that allows for a transparent understanding of the process of their execution and development without allowing a full rendering and aesthetic contemplation of a clear end result. These works play out scientific revelations, shaping his artistic practice while taking on new aspects as they become part of Nasseri’s visual and aesthetic experience.

In his Drill Cores sculptures, the delicate copper alloyed-steel poles dance around one another, suggesting an underlying structure without defining its boundaries, playing with the infinite possibilities of the moment. His drawings, intentionally mimicking book pages, at first glance appear to be pages from mathematic or scientific textbooks, expanding the ties to this infinite library concept and the endless possibilities of what its accepted as knowledge or fact. They have an officiality in presentation without the full conception, leaving the next step open for the ‘reader’. The wall-objects, when viewed from the front have a striking symmetry and clarity. However, even a minor change in perspective leads to the displacement of this certainty as it deforms anamorphously, reflecting a different simultaneously existing reality for the viewer.

Timo Nasseri was born 1972 in Berlin. There he studied photography. Amongst different promotional awards he received the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in 2011. His art has been seen in various group-exhibitions such as “Wunder”, Hamburger Deichtorhallen and Kunsthalle Krems, and „Sculpture is Everything“ at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Braisbane, Australia.

In September 2012 we launch the first book on Timo Nasseri’s work published in Distanz Verlag, Berlin.